25 Facts About Stasi

Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city.

The Stasi motto was, referring to the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany and echoing a theme of the KGB, the Soviet counterpart and close partner, with respect to its own ruling party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union .

Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for 32 of the 40 years of the GDR's existence.

The Stasi maintained contacts, and occasionally cooperated, with West German terrorists.

The Stasi held this status until November 1955, when it was restored to a ministry.

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Collaboration was so close that the KGB invited the Stasi to establish operational bases in Moscow and Leningrad to monitor visiting East German tourists and Mielke referred to the Stasi officers as "Chekists of the Soviet Union".

The Stasi fielded Location Detachments at state-owned enterprises of high importance .

Regular commissioned Stasi officers were recruited from conscripts who had been honourably discharged from their 18 months' compulsory military service, had been members of the SED, had had a high level of participation in the Party's youth wing's activities and had been Stasi informers during their service in the Military.

Stasi had formal categorizations of each type of informant, and had official guidelines on how to extract information from, and control, those with whom they came into contact.

Stasi's ranks swelled considerably after Eastern Bloc countries signed the 1975 Helsinki accords, which GDR leader Erich Honecker viewed as a grave threat to his regime because they contained language binding signatories to respect "human and basic rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and conviction".

The Stasi acted as a proxy for KGB to conduct activities in other Eastern Bloc countries, such as Poland, where the Soviets were despised.

The Stasi employed one secret policeman for every 166 East Germans.

Stasi agents infiltrated and undermined West Germany's government and spy agencies.

Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung – a term borrowed from chemistry which literally means "decomposition".

Stasi employees began to destroy the extensive files and documents they held, either by hand or by using incineration or shredders.

Some Stasi employees were thrown out of upper floor windows, but there were no deaths or serious injuries.

In nearly every speech, the Stasi minister gave the order to find out who is who, which meant who thinks what.

Stasi didn't want to wait until somebody tried to act against the regime.

Stasi wanted to know in advance what people were thinking and planning.

In 1992, following a declassification ruling by the German government, the Stasi files were opened, leading people to gain access to their files.

Some groups within the former Stasi community used threats of violence to scare off Stasi hunters, who were actively tracking down ex-members.

The Stasi then used it as a remand prison, mainly for political prisoners from 1952 until 1989.

Former Stasi officers continue to be politically active via the Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitaren Unterstutzung .

Former high-ranking officers and employees of the Stasi, including the last Stasi director, Wolfgang Schwanitz, make up the majority of the organization's members, and it receives support from the German Communist Party, among others.

For example, in March 2006, the Berlin Senator for Education received a letter from a GRH member and former Stasi officer attacking the Museum for promoting "falsehoods, anti-communist agitation and psychological terror against minors".

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